This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention that is recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented or described. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Communication items of a communication system such as telephone calls, short messaging service (SMS) messages, multimedia messages (MMS), instant messages, email messages etc. are typically received with a source identifier indicating the origin of the respective communication item. However, for example the sender information in an email message can be rather easily faked and hence a user may be reluctant to open any email from a previously unknown email address or receiving a suspicious email from a known email address. As another example, a user may be reluctant to answer a telephone call received from an unknown number e.g. due to being busy or due to unwillingness to accept calls from unrecognized callers.
As a related issue, the present communication systems fail to provide a reliable approach for characterizing an incoming communication item. While e.g. many email systems enable setting a flag indicative of the importance of a message, this approach is quite often misused, hence undermining the applicability of such a flag. Moreover, many communication systems, such as telephone communication systems, do not provide any approach for characterizing the priority or other aspects of an incoming call or message.